Brown.edu: How Everything Went Wrong

As University faculty, students, and prospective applicants have known for over a month now, brown.edu has undergone the digital equivalent of a botched plastic surgery. Many assumed the new site was a joke; I know I laughed the first time I saw it. And on August 21st, when webpagesthatsuck.com listed brown.edu as the “daily sucker,” the rest of the world started laughing too. But the reality is that there is nothing funny about this website: as the digital face of the Brown University community, its deficiencies devalue the investment of time and money that every student here has made. It is more than a disgrace; it is causing tangible damage.

While not wishing to dwell on the obvious, I feel it important to briefly sum up the major complaints about the website. As stated earlier, brown.edu is the digital face of the University. As such, it needs both to serve those who are already here, as well as to welcome those who are not. The current design fails in both regards. Important information, which should be intuitive to access, takes conscious escort to find. Whereas the old website presented news, facts about the University, and attractive pictures of the community, the new site hides all but a single picture, which it encases in a small box. Thus, rather than drawing the reader into Brown, it visually tucks the University away. Visit yale.edu or princeton.edu for comparison, and you will see exactly what I mean.

Beyond this, the site is aesthetically repulsive. The text “Brown University” appears in a small, unassuming font above a set of sliding text boxes. An equally meek looking and low resolution image of Brown’s shield is the only other visual relief from the dismal mud-brown background color. And the site links, which are contained in the sliding boxes, will actually move away from the mouse cursor when browsing between categories. In web design, simple and intuitive is generally best, and Brown’s website is neither of these. Rather, its gratuitous animation forces users to think and work to find the content that they need.

How did Brown’s website get this way? The story is not one that Michael Chapman’s office is eager to tell. Chapman is the Vice President of Public Affairs and University Relations, who oversaw the site’s creation. In a September 12th article in The Brown Daily Herald (“New Brown.edu Not Sliding by Unnoticed”), he says, “Our goal was to create something functional, as well as bold, new and different, that would reflect the spirit of the University and generate a sense of discovery about Brown.” Responding to questions about the quality of the site, he says that responses from the feedback form have been “mixed,” and he refuses to reveal the cost of production.

Chapman’s claim that feedback regarding the website has been mixed is correct. At the time of this writing, there have been over 600 feedback forms submitted. Of these, the ratio of negative to positive is slightly greater than 25:1. Which, technically, is mixed. I think, however, that most would consider this a rather poor showing. Why Chapman has chosen to ignore this feedback is anyone’s guess. His claim that “it will take time to get used to the site” is

becoming almost laughable as the weeks go by and the negative feedback keeps coming in. And even were his claim true, the fact is that prospective students looking around at fifteen or twenty different colleges are not going to take the time to get used to anything. Nor should they need to.